{"id":11486,"date":"2020-04-23T16:01:36","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T20:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transy.edu\/1780\/?p=11486"},"modified":"2020-07-14T14:21:22","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T18:21:22","slug":"torn-up-little-league-application-motivates-girl-now-transylvania-prof-to-go-to-bat-for-female-athletes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transy.edu\/1780\/2020\/04\/torn-up-little-league-application-motivates-girl-now-transylvania-prof-to-go-to-bat-for-female-athletes\/","title":{"rendered":"Torn-up Little League application motivates girl, now Transylvania prof, to go to bat for female athletes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Sharon Brown liked to play baseball back when she was in fifth grade, so her dad tried to register her for Little League.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was 1973, and whoever got the application ripped it to pieces. When Brown’s father, a coach himself, brought home the torn-up form, she was understandably upset \u2014 and they taped it back together. Then she wrote a letter to her local newspaper about how unfair it was she couldn’t play baseball like her little brother could, that there were no opportunities for girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later that year, not long after the anti-discriminatory Title IX law passed, her Illinois town started Little League softball for girls. Brown, now a health and exercise science professor at Transylvania University, joined one of the teams \u2014 and four years later she competed in the Little League Softball World Series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“I think the time was ripe, and people had to pay attention to this inequity for girls in sports,” said Brown, who recently talked about this and other experiences for a recent Champions of Active Women podcast as part of the University of Kentucky Active Women’s Health Initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little League was only the beginning of a lifelong dedication to athletics and physical fitness \u2014 she went on to play Division I college softball, cross-country ski along the border of Russia and Finland, take groups of students on bike treks across the Netherlands, help organize a Kentucky Bike-Walk Summit<\/a> at Transylvania, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown appreciates the strong support females now have in their athletic pursuits. In fact, she was out jogging in a park one day when she saw a large group of girls teams playing soccer. She stopped and said to herself, “Wow this is a different world for girls. We’ve come a long way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listen to her story:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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